Nerf
A nerf (symbol: ) is a term that's used to describe the weakening of something, either through updating a game or by releasing a sequel. Nerfs are often done to try balancing towers, by weakening towers that are considered too strong. The opposite of a Nerf is a "Buff," which involves the strengthening of something between sequel games and game updates. Notable examples BTD5 Flash to BTD5 Mobile and similar mobile games *The much smaller explosions in Pineapples has greatly diminished its already unreliable explosion reliability. *Most explosive towers and upgrades, particularly Bomb Tower and Mortar Towers, have smaller explosions than in the Flash versions of the games, decreasing their reliability against defending grouped bloons. *The MOAB-SHREDR Spikes and Spiked Mines upgrades for the Spike Factory have a noticeably lower attack speed, hurting their defending capabilities. BTD Battles Mobile game updates * The Bloonchipper was used incredibly often due to it being able to stall M.O.A.B. Class Bloons with its Supa-Vac ability which allowed the user to outlast their opponent, deal lots of damage to them with Super Wide Funnel, and help defend against spaced bloons. While the Bloonchipper did receive nerfs in game updates, they didn't stop it from still being used. However, in update 4.1 the Bloonchipper received a massive nerf in the form of removing the ability for both Super Wide Funnel and Supa-Vac to suck in Z.O.M.Gs. This in turn drastically weakened its ability to outlast opponents and thus lowered its usage from being one of the most used tower in the game, to one of the least used. While the Bloonchipper is nowhere near as good as it used to be, it still performs reasonably well versus spaced bloons, and still has some loadouts that use it (albeit not many), such as Wizard Farm Chipper and Tack Village Chipper. This has also caused a lot of complaints from players since the Super Wide Funnel is much less useful *The spamming of M.I.B. Call to Arms to exploit its ability-stacking to immense attack speed and popping power has lead to the popularity of videos about hypersonic towers. However, in Version 4.3.1, the game was updated so that it was no longer possible to stack M.I.B. Call to Arms abilities together. This lead to players complaining about how the M.I.B. Call to Arms is both now still unbalanced and lost a very "cool" exploit. *The unexpected Glue Gunner nerf in Version 4.9 where glue no longer duplicates under Monkey Fort has caused criticism over how Ninja Kiwi decides upon balance changes, especially since even stronger towers affected by projectile duplication such as Hydra Rocket Pods hasn't been affected by the nerf yet a much less useful tower such as Glue Gunner gets the nerf. *The Spike Factory received a pretty large nerf when the lifetime of its spikes was drastically decreased, which in turn reduced the number of spikes the Spike Factory could produce significantly. Thanks to this the Spike Factory is one of the least used towers in the game since its main use (to catch leaks) isn't very reliable since it can't hold off a lot of bloons before it gets overwhelmed. Category:Miscellaneous